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She told the court: “The purpose of the visit was to discuss concerns about a Facebook posting potentially exposing the defendant as a sex offender.

“While they were there the officers requested to view his phone and raised concern about the search history and websites used.”

Ms Jabbari said when Hutchinson, who has 120 previous convictions, was interviewed he admitted viewing and downloading the images, but ‘minimised it somewhat by saying he had been speaking to people about it and became curious’.

Imran Majid, defending, said Hutchinson was ‘merely curious’ and didn’t download the images for ‘sexual gratification. He told the court that the defendant deserved credit for his early guilty plea.

He said: “He had looked at the images and as far as he was concerned had deleted them so they couldn’t be seen again.